I currently have Google Apps managing my domain's mail, contacts, and calendars. An important reason that we chose Google Apps was because of contact sync. We are a small business and need to share important customer contact information between ourselves.

Unfortunately I was mislead by Google Apps technical support, Google's own online documentation, and other blog posts and forums about Google Contact Sync to think that it was able to sync all of your Contacts. It doesn't, and I'm scrambling to find a solution.

I have explored all the services that I could find, but they aren't cheap or increase complexity:

Soocial - For $40 a year it can sync multiple Google accounts' contacts. Its cheap and does solve our problem. However there is no integration with Google Apps, so each new user requires a bit more setup. This isn't good since my boss isn't very technical and I'm not going to be around all the time or the future to do it for him. It can also be slow: For a new contact to reach one iPhone to another takes iPhone > Google Contacts > Soocial > Other Google Contacts > iPhone. Doesn't seem like a fast process there

Sherpa Tools - This was actually recommended by the Google tech. On the outside it looks perfect: Has a global contact list and is free. Unfortunately it seems to require you to create it in the Sherpa Tools interface, not anywhere else. It is also quite slow: A test contact I created 45 minutes ago still isn't showing up in any of my user's contact lists.

floreysoft - Another Google App Engine product, this also integrates with Google Apps. Unfortunately its expensive; the edition I would need costs $200 a year, which is more than I pay Google for my 3 users

None of these services offer a really good scenario. Is there any other tool I'm missing that can sync all the contact lists of every user in a Google Apps domain easily and cheaply?

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3 Answers
3

There is a solution...floreysoft. This will enable you to completely manage your contacts in google as it is integrated in google through: the google aps engine. The setup takes some time and you have to completely read the instructions to not mess it up. Once it is set up you are up and running.

I have 10 users synced. I initially set it up so that all were "editors"...Now I make it so all are "read only" that way the address book is managed at the top level: we use salesforce.com.

Then, we push from salesforce to the main account in google aps. Then, from there all the users, including me, are "read only" that way you are forced to add new contacts into salesforce.com...then it filters down to all your devices via floreysoft.

I just wanted to mention that SherpaTools, which was mentioned in the original question, has been replaced by a new cloud management tool called FlashPanel, which allows you to share contacts and much more, such as set a company-wide email signature and set sharing policies for Google Drive for individual users or Org. Units.

If you have any questions, you can reach us at e-mail address in our profile.